


Along the Lake

by veracities (Lir)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Asphyxiation, Canon Compliant, Drowning, Gen, Middle School, Pre-Canon, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-07-26 13:48:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7576300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/pseuds/veracities
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Oikawa wakes up on the couch inside the lake house, swaddled in blankets, coughing as he gains consciousness. He doesn't remember being pulled out of the lake; he is told he was found on the pier, spread out in his rain coat, as if he had fallen. He is thirteen years old; he is <i>mortified</i> by how this makes him look. He refuses to hear anything more about his accident. </p>
</blockquote><p>In his second year of middle school, Oikawa has an unfortunate accident during a brief family summer vacation. At the start of his third year of middle school, he is forced to revisit the incident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Along the Lake

* * *

The rain comes down in sheets and buckets, drenching everything in sight and cutting visibility down to only a few meters in front of Oikawa's face. He's in a rain coat, a bright green one, standing just in the lee of the lake house where the rain isn't _quite_ blowing in under his hood, because if there's one thing he's learned quite well, through trial and error and the rare raised voice, _it's impossible to play volleyball inside the house._

Staring off across the soggy lawn, Oikawa assesses that it's impossible to play volleyball outdoors, too, on a day as dismal as this one. He's made a few abortive attempts at tosses, but every time he tries to set the ball the deluge of the rain drives it off course. Precision of any sort is a distant dream, under those conditions. 

He grips the volleyball in his hands and sets off stubbornly across the grass. The back lawn slopes slowly down toward the lake itself, where a rickety-looking old pier — sturdier than it appears, as Oikawa has proven through thorough testing he _knows_ would be largely frowned upon — extends out over the water. It's a lonely sort of place, no boats, no people, not as far as their house is from other dwellings along the lake. 

It was meant to be a brief vacation over the summer holidays, during Oikawa's second year of middle school. But with the weather the way it is, and his parents the way they are, he's hardly been able to do _anything_ at his leisure, not even practice. 

The wooden planks on the pier are slippery with the rain, worn down smooth by the passage of many feet over many years and all the more treacherous for how slick their smooth faces get. Oikawa walks across them slowly, coming to the end of the pier and drawing up short before the lake's choppy little waves. 

He should go back inside. The weather is dreadful, and there's nothing to do outdoors in the rain. But he's already drenched, and he's stubborn, and he's already completed all of his summer homework _days_ ago and read every book he'd brought along with him for casual consumption. He'll go in when somebody comes out and _makes_ him, and not a minute sooner. 

(Part of him is aware that he will cave long before then, once the damp starts creeping into his bones and he can't stop shivering with the chill of it. He _knows_ this, but he does not have to admit it.) 

Oikawa squeezes the volleyball between his palms, seated on the edge of the pier with his legs dangling over the edge. It's slippery in his hands, slick as the planks he's sitting on, and the rubber squeaks beneath his fingers when he squeezes it tight, tighter, venting his frustration through the clenching of his hands. 

The volleyball pops out from between them, squirting between his fingers and hitting the water beneath him hard enough to splash back against his legs. He's already drenched, so he disregards it. The force of the impact absorbs most of the ball's momentum, leaving it to bob harmlessly just a few feet away. Not about to lose a perfectly good volleyball to a lake in a storm just because he'd needed a moment or two to throw a tantrum, Oikawa gets up on hands and knees, peering over the side of the pier to see if maybe, he could just—

There's someone peering up at him, eyes staring out from the shadow cast by the wood. 

Oikawa makes a strangled sound in his throat and pulls his head back, flinching away so badly that he lands on his backside and sticks there. For a long moment he can hear nothing but the heavy drumming of his heartbeat in his ears, the rushing sound of the rain pouring down all around him. It feels as if his heart is about to tear itself out of his chest, it's hammering so fast. 

He gives it another moment, then leans over the side of the pier again. 

The eyes are still there, staring out of a pale, discolored face. This time, Oikawa does not scream (he did not scream!) and does not startle back, simply holds his ground and stares the — boy? Is it a boy? He stares them down, stubborn for all that his heartbeat is still roaring in his ears, loud enough to drown out all other sound. 

The boy's head is tilted back at an impossible angle, as if he's floating on his back, but _farther,_ bent to the point of Oikawa's neck throbbing in painful sympathy. For a long moment they stare at each other, the strange boy floating serenely in the water, wide dark eyes locked on Oikawa as Oikawa sits on the pier leaning on his hands. Then the boy reaches up — up, impossibly up, a reach longer than should ever have been possible, and grasps Oikawa by both his wrists. 

This time, Oikawa screams. 

Prior to that moment, it hadn't quite occurred to him to be afraid. Oh, his heart was racing and his adrenaline pumping, his body given an awful shock by the surprise. But he hadn't been _scared._ Now cold, clammy hands wrap around his wrists in a deathly vice grip, and stubbornly though Oikawa might grasp onto the planks of the pier, they proceed to pull him inexorably over the edge into the water. 

He hits it with an ugly splash, the wind going out of him when he breaks the surface in too many places at once. He gasps, surprised, and sucks in only water, coughs and chokes and tries to spit it back out. Those hands are still wrapped around his wrists, still anchored to a chill and heavy body which only serves to drag Oikawa further under the water. 

He panics, thrashes, kicks against his restraints, against the water, pushing vainly toward the surface. There's a rush in his ears as his head plunges all the way beneath the surface. His lungs are burning. His wrists are aching, no longer cold but hot, hot like the radiator burn he'd gotten once as a child, pressing too close to the space heater. He thrashes again, but everything around him is a sea of bubbles and murky blue-gray light. He doesn't know which way is up any longer, doesn't know which direction will lead to the surface. 

He tries not to breathe in, but his chest is aching, the bone-deep pain of desperation. 

Involuntarily, he gasps in, and a deep gulp of water floods his lungs. He chokes, coughs, but the water is in him, drowning him, and he cannot spit it up. The last thing he sees are bright, luminous eyes hovering just before his face as his vision grays at the edges, eyes that glow cherry-apple red.

* * *

Oikawa wakes up on the couch inside the lake house, swaddled in blankets, coughing as he gains consciousness. He doesn't remember being pulled out of the lake; he is told he was found on the pier, spread out in his rain coat, as if he had fallen. He is thirteen years old; he is _mortified_ by how this makes him look. He refuses to hear anything more about his accident.

* * *

Oikawa is fourteen years old, at the start of his third year of middle school. He is charming and popular, and well integrated into the Kitagawa Daiichi volleyball club. The decision to make him captain had been unanimous by his teammates. And so he's there, waiting in the gym, on the very first day when first year students are invited to join in on club activities.

He's heard the whispers, the rumors, of a boy signing up who had been astoundingly talented even at the elementary level. The adults, his coach, they all whisper _genius_ in hushed tones gone soft with their awe. Oikawa shakes those voices off; he'll see what to make of their new member once he's seen him on the court. 

The new boys walk into the room, one after another, and Oikawa's gaze skims indulgently across the line of them, his usual coy little smile already in place on his lips. It freezes where it sits when his eyes catch on the last boy, standing just off from his peers, dark-haired and dark-eyed and _eerily familiar._

Oikawa hears a rushing in his ears, feels the pounding in his chest, cannot stop his heart from speeding with some instinctual, knee-jerk fear. He shakes it off, forcibly, pushes away the reactions of his body which is _failing_ him. He is the captain, their setter, the control tower of the team. He will not be frightened off by promises of genius, nor by dark, dark blue eyes which his gut insists powerfully should be tinted red.

* * *


End file.
